


How To Make Friends Without Actually Making Friends

by isengard



Series: Steve Rogers Doesn't Remember Signing Up for This (Among Other Things) [2]
Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012), The Avengers - All Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Drug Dealing, Gen, Loki uses pot to make friends, Marijuana, not like the wire or anything just harmless college stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-26
Updated: 2012-08-26
Packaged: 2017-11-12 22:27:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/496323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isengard/pseuds/isengard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki is a college freshman with limited social skills.  Selling weed seems like a good way to meet people, and it certainly keeps his big brother Thor coming around.  In fact, it might be the <em>only</em> thing keeping him around.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How To Make Friends Without Actually Making Friends

_Bzzt_.

“Fuck off,” Loki mumbled drowsily against his pillow. It wasn’t early; in fact, it was well after lunch, but he’d stayed up watching _X-Files_ reruns until six in the morning and couldn’t be bothered to get out of bed yet. No class on Friday was a beautiful thing.

 _Bzzt_.

He groaned and rolled over, clumsily scooping up his vibrating phone and rubbing his eyes. “Yeah?”

“Little bro!” Thor’s boisterous voice boomed through the speaker, causing Loki to wince and hold the phone a few inches away from his ear. He could hear the chattering of girls in the background.

“What do you want?” Like he needed to ask.

“Just checking in. Didn’t see your grubby little ass at lunch; figured you were still in bed like always,” Thor chuckled. Loki’s mouth tightened. Several retorts positioned themselves on the tip of his tongue, but he chose to hold it. Some years ago he might’ve let whatever petty insults came to mind fly, but now, as a college freshman whose social life depended on his brother’s influence, he was keeping more and more things to himself. Jane, Thor’s on-and-off girlfriend, had once tried to tell him that it wasn’t healthy to keep things bottled up all the time, and he’d have liked to talk to her about it more, but then she and Thor had broken up again, and she’d completely avoided him until they’d gotten back together. 

He settled on replying, “I had kind of a late night.”

Thor laughed and shouted something incoherent, and it took Loki a minute to realize he wasn’t talking to him anymore. “Hogun, I’d actually like to see you _try_. Yeah, say it to my face, you mother – ” he broke off laughing, and a sudden scratching noise made Loki suspect he’d dropped the phone for some kind of impromptu homoerotic tussling match. 

This kind of thing tended to happen often with Thor.

Loki hit the speaker button and pushed himself up out of bed, fishing around on the floor for a clean shirt. His brother would eventually remember he’d called for a reason; past experience told him it could only be one of two things. One: he needed a paper edited for grammar, or two: he needed to buy some weed. Since it was Friday, Loki felt he could be fairly certain Thor was after the latter. And if he was with his frat buddies, he’d want to buy at least a quarter ounce. It was no problem for him – Loki’d secured a medical card as his first order of business upon arriving at school. It wouldn’t do to rely on his brother entirely for social status, and his near-constant supply of top-shelf herb had made him highly sought after on campus. The upside of dealing was that people always wanted to hang out with him. The downside was that once they got their weed, they stopped wanting to hang out with him. Even Thor could be depended on to excuse himself from Loki’s company once they’d gone through a blunt and exhausted their reserves of meaningless, gossipy one-liners.

It was a little disappointing, but there was some satisfaction in the way Thor and all the others always came crawling back with false flattery and crisp twenties from the campus ATM. Loki liked to toy with some of them; not answering their phone calls for a few days, watching them congregate around his room or stopping him after class. Thor’d once asked him why he was ignoring the senior lacrosse captain’s texts, and Loki’d replied, “It’s fun to make them work for it.” That hadn’t seemed to sit well with Thor, although he’d laughed it off. Whatever. It _was_ fun. They _gave_ him the power to fuck with them, by entertaining any bullshit he spouted off just to be able to keep buying from him; by literally stalking him until they were satisfied they’d formed a relationship with him; by being so fucking transparent and desperate all the time. Guys needed weed to attract girls; it was some kind of college law, and it was also a law that most of them were too lazy and stupid to go out and just get it themselves. They _wanted_ a middleman. They wanted to pay more and get less, so screw them. They had it coming.

“You still there?” Thor’s voice crackled back through the line. Loki sighed and put the phone back to his ear.

“Here.”

“Awesome. So, you gonna be around today?”

 _Oh, for fuck’s sake Thor, quit beating around the bush_. “Yeah.”

“You think we could swing by?”

He rolled his eyes. “’Swing by’?”

“Sure! Gotta keep an eye on my baby brother. And maybe we could pick up?” He paused. “Do you have enough to get us a quarter?”

Loki had to admire his brother’s barely veiled attempt to act like the idea of picking up weed had just occurred to him at that very moment. He wasn’t sure why Thor even kept up the act; they both knew what the endgame was. It was always the same. And Loki wasn’t the dumb kid he’d once been, always willing to overlook the obvious in favor of the fantasy he’d had in his head of Thor accepting him, looking to him as an equal for advice and support and whatever else it was brothers gave to each other at their age. Now he knew better.

“I can probably do that.”

“You’re the fucking man, Loki. All right, we’ll be there in fifteen.”

“Can you make it an hour?” He wanted to shower, and he wanted the meeting to be on his terms.

Thor said something to someone in the background that he couldn’t make out, and then replied, “For sure. See you soon.”

Loki hung up without saying goodbye, and caught his own smirk in the dirty mirror peeking out at him from behind his closet door. It unsettled him, but he didn’t know why, so he made a quick grab for his towel and slammed the door shut.

\--

“You sure that’s a quarter?” Fandral squinted at the sack Loki’d tossed to him.

“And a little extra.” Loki tried to keep his voice even. Fandral was _always_ giving him shit. He was by far Loki’s least favorite of Thor’s friends. He dressed like he was fucking R. Kelly or something, and Loki generally found it hard to believe he’d gotten into college at all, let alone a prestigious institution. “Weighed it twice.”

“I just – ”

“Fan.” Thor’s voice was quiet, but stern. They all knew what he’d been about to say. Loki didn’t let anyone watch while he weighed out the sacks; he hated hovering, and he supposed it was another sort of small power trip. They had to trust him; or else actually show some fucking initiative (yeah, right) and bring their own scales. He didn’t stiff people often, but he enjoyed knowing that he _could_. They’d complain, but they’d still pay up, and they’d still come back. Loki had no intention of being a drug dealer after college, but he privately thought he’d be pretty good at it. And frankly, the more econ classes he took, the more he thought it might be his best chance at success. 

But, no, that wouldn’t do. He’d sell drugs for now, get enough money to travel around for a few years after college, then come back and work his way to the top of his dad’s investment company. And then all these idiot jocks and frat boys would be working for _him_. 

If it was a power rush to control other people’s weed supply, he could only imagine how gratifying it would be to control their pensions.

The atmosphere’d gotten a bit tense, and he caught Sif, Thor’s ex fuck-buddy, giving him a meaningful look. Loki had a suspicion that Sif had a thing for him, which he didn’t remotely understand or trust, although she did hold the honor of being the only friend of his brother’s who he respected. It helped that she was extremely hot.

He looked around at the three of them. “Should we do a J?”

Thor relaxed visibly. “Thought you’d never ask,” he grinned. “See, Fan? Loki’s chill.”

Fandral didn’t look convinced, but he didn’t argue either, and Loki fought to keep the smugness of victory off his face. _That’s right, bitch. Fall in line_.

He rolled the joint swiftly and passed it to Sif, who deliberately (he thought) brushed her fingers against his while taking it.

“Want me to get that for you?” Thor asked gruffly, holding out a lighter.

She snatched it out of his hand with a smirk. “You can try.”

Loki suppressed a laugh, but still caught an annoyed glance from his brother.

Sif passed the joint to him and he took a couple hits before handing it to Thor. “So what’s going on this weekend?” he asked through a thick stream of smoke.

Thor coughed. “Just a Grab-A-Date. Frat stuff.”

That was code for: _you’re not invited_.

“Sounds lame.”

“Did you start your finance paper yet?” Sif changed the subject. She and Loki were in the same Intro to Finance lecture; although he’d fallen out of the habit of regular attendance since he realized he’d mastered most of the curriculum simply by interning for his father over the summer.

“Nah. I’ll BS it Sunday night. Shit’s pretty fucking basic.”

Fandral snorted. “Said the freshman.”

Loki leaned his head back in his desk chair and closed his eyes. “The freshman who’s smoking you out,” he replied dryly.

Thor laughed loudly, and Loki wondered if any of his friends knew he only laughed like that when he was nervous or trying to diffuse a situation. “Still can’t believe my baby brother is a fucking herb connoisseur.”

“Yeah, well, I can’t believe that shady-ass townie you guys were buying from before I got here,” Loki fired back, grinning. “Not that Seth didn’t have his merits. All that provincial charm that comes with being a high school dropout.”

“Don’t be a dick,” Thor said automatically. There was an increasing lack of conviction behind his words when he reprimanded Loki. When he was feeling sentimental, Loki entertained the idea that his brother sensed he was slipping away, and was trying to hold on without really knowing how. But he wasn’t a huge fan of feeling sentimental; it was confusing and troubling and didn’t particularly suit the self-image he’d spent the past few years carefully cultivating. So he avoided it as much as possible.

“How’s Jane?” he asked. He was disappointed when the question didn’t seem to throw Thor as much as he’d hoped it would. They must’ve made up from their last fight.

“She’s good,” Thor answered shortly. He exchanged a look with Fandral. “We’re good.”

“She know you’re here?” Loki tried again. A guilty expression passed over his brother’s face, and he cheered up. Jane had more or less made peace with Thor’s habitual smoking – he _was_ in a frat, after all – but she’d made her position on Loki’s dealing and Thor’s support of it abundantly clear. The one time that Thor had gone to bat for him against her, she’d been threatening to get him put on probation for selling, and Thor’d pleaded with her not to. Not, Loki suspected, for the sake of his brother’s academic reputation, but so that he could continue to buy from him. It’d been the reason behind their last breakup, and Loki was almost certain Jane didn’t know her boyfriend was still participating in his little brother’s illegal enterprise.

Sif raised her eyebrows in Thor’s direction. “You still haven’t talked to her about it?”

Thor shifted uncomfortably. “It hasn’t come up.”

“Hasn’t come _up_?” she repeated incredulously. “You two are, like, surgically conjoined. This is actually the first time I’ve seen you without her in a week.”

Thor cast a scowl her way. “She’s not a fan, okay? Let’s drop it.”

“I bet we could work something out,” Loki mused. “She’s on scholarship, right?” Thor glared at him, but he went on. “Offer her a cut. Might be nice to have an RA in on the take.”

“I said drop it.”

He clicked his tongue. “Pretty lofty ethnics for a business major.”

“Loki.” Thor sounded angry now. He weighed his options, and decided to back off.

“Sorry.”

Thor shrugged. “Whatever.” He looked around at Fandral and Sif and then said, “We should probably get going.”

He pushed away the disappointment that threatened to wash over him. “Frat stuff?”

Thor nodded shortly. Sif looked like she might say something, but didn’t. Fandral tucked the weed into his backpack, his relief to be leaving evident.

“See you later,” Loki called to them, hating himself for the whining edge his voice had suddenly taken on.

Sif cast a final look at him over her shoulder before they turned the corner and disappeared, and her eyes widened in a reaction he didn’t understand until he caught another glimpse of himself in the mirror. His face was drawn in a hurt expression; he looked young, stupid, the naïve little brother he so detested coming out at the worst possible moment. Disgusted, he ripped the mirror off the door and thrust it to the back of the closet.

“One day,” he said to himself. “One day, you won’t be so fucking weak. You’ll _own_ those bastards.” He discarded his white t-shirt for a dark green one that he’d picked up on a whim at H &M. “Much better.”


End file.
